Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will. Thank you, Acting Deputy President. That's the first little dirty secret that those opposite are hiding from the rest of the nation. We say yes. Yes, we must have a sensible mix of renewables, gas and coal initially as we transition to nuclear. But it cannot come off the backs of millions of people who have been enslaved. We have to deal with both. We have to deal with the transition to a zero carbon economy and energy. But you are doing it off the backs of millions of people who are in servitude.

What's the second dirty secret? What happens with all the waste? It's very clear for nuclear energy, for the low, medium and high levels of waste that are produced, that we will need to dispose of our own waste. But we can. In Western Australia there is already an industrial waste processing plant at Sandy Ridge outside Kalgoorlie. It is already taking tens of thousands of cubic metres of waste and safely burying them and disposing of them. They have the social licence to do this, they have the best geology in the world to do this and they have the best climate to do this. They can take high-level waste, and they have the social licence to do that already. But those opposite scream as if we're going to be putting high-level nuclear waste in the suburbs of our major cities. Shame on you. You know that's not true. You know we already have facilities that do this. As other speakers have already said, we've been storing low-level radiological waste for decades here in Australia. We are a nuclear nation. In my own home state of Western Australia we are in the process, somewhat slowly, a bit too slowly, of transitioning to become sovereign nuclear ready. As we transition in Western Australia, we have the capacity to store, manage and respond to any incidents, but we also have the waste disposal facilities.

So, when we have a look and we talk about the facts, the facts are on the side of those who sit on this side of the chamber. The rest of the world is transitioning. The developed north, the geographic north, certainly is, so why shouldn't we? Why should we not transition to get the economic benefits, to get the environmental benefits and to ensure that we are not destroying thousands of kilometres of pristine Australian bush, flora and fauna? We have the ability to save the waste.

Finally, I have another issue that some of my Western Australian colleagues—Andrew Hastie, Nola Marino and others—have been fighting for with their local communities. The government is proposing mega wind farms right across many of our oceans, along our coastlines. In Western Australia, one of them runs 8,000 square kilometres along the south-west coastline. The community is rightly outraged. It is not necessary. If we transition to a small modular reactor at Muja, just outside of Collie, we do not need these 8,000 square kilometres of wind farms. With the amount of community outrage that there is, this will never get built. It should never get built. We should actually now look to transition to nuclear.

Like everything else this government has done, they've not only stuffed up the consultation—they're years behind. But we also found out at Senate estimates, only a couple of weeks ago, that the geniuses in this government said, 'Well, we'll put 8,000 square kilometres of large industrial wind turbines south of Garden Island.' Guess what? They never stopped to think of any security implications. Have they talked to our AUKUS partners? What do they think about having these Chinese built and constructed megastructures in their approaches to Garden Island and close to Garden Island? Well, I can tell you what. They do know about it now, and, if you think it's going to be in our nation's interest to have thousands of Chinese built and installed wind turbines that will impede submarine access and whale migration to Garden Island, you are crazy. Of course it won't be. This wind farm will never get built and shouldn't be built, but those opposite have no plan B. We are already suffering for that.